Preview: It’s full of big men, with big guns, killing lots of stuff. So... perfect Gears of War, right?
You know, for a franchise as big as Gears of War, we had a helluva problem leading up to our preview session. Namely, we couldn’t find anyone to head along to Xbox HQ to actually play the thing. The reason we wanted to dodge it ourselves is because of, well... we really can’t stand Gears of War.
Now, you might be howling with rage right now, but seriously, if there are two kinds of people in the world – those who like Gears and those who would rather gargle with ebola – we’re in the latter category. And, it appears, we’re not alone. No one in our office seems to like it, so perhaps there’s some massive disconnect in play; maybe we’re missing a part of our soul, or maybe we’re just not really, ahem, proper console gamers. Regardless, we ended up stuck with the duty. To that end, we’re going to try and look at our preview – a bit of co-op and the first few hours of the campaign - from the point of view of a Gears noob, and look at why this might be the game that changes your mind.
So, is it? Oh hells no.
Look, I know that Halo isn’t exactly War and Peace, but at least there’s a hint of emotional depth and pathos involved. With Gears – and Gears of War 3 is no exception – it’s all bulging beefcake and pissing contests, combined with a plot (or what we laughingly refer to as a plot, anyhow) that’s only a little more well-constructed than your average Michael Bay film.
Now, bear in mind that we’re no experts of the Gears backstory, but also bear in mind that I don’t think really matters.
The game kicks off with Marcus Fenix having a dream about his dear-departed father; it’s basically you’re classic low-stakes training level. There’s some left over guilt that Marcus is dealing with after letting his dad die, and now he wants to... yawn. I might care, if I Marcus were at all likeable, but I’ve always found him to be a depthless cliché at the best of times (with enormous, armoured man-boobs). And like I said, he makes the Chief – the ultimate in faceless characters – seem like your oldest and dearest buddy by comparison. Marcus seems to be surrounded by the usual surly crew of rednecks who’d give their life for him, but I am flummoxed to work out why.
From there we discover the last remnants of humanity, all floating along on a naval convoy. Then, at last, we get into the proper meat of the game – blowing the crap out of things while hiding behind an abundance of conveniently placed chest-high walls.
One of the issues we’ve always had with cover-based shooters is that you can always tell how any given level is meant to be cleared. It’s right there in the angles of walls, crates (ah, the crates – where would gaming be without ‘em?), and exploding barrels. You could try and bring a sense of tactical innovation to the party, but then, chances are, you’d die. Instead, it’s base of fire, advance, flank, kill every time, with the occasional melee kill to break it all up. Gears 3 even tempts you with hints of multi-path gameplay, with choices over things like splitting your squad and taking different routes to target, but these moments are over in a flash and usually lead to the same spot inside of thirty seconds anyway.
There’s a hint of cleverness, however, when you get to effectively replay the first hour or so of game, only this time from the point of view of the squad that showed up at the end of that first stretch to save the day. It’s a hint, but less of a one when you realise that after three hours of exploding gore and numbing machismo, you still haven’t really advance the plot. All the hooks that were introduced in the first half hour are nowhere closer to being answered or resolved, and it’s this that makes me thing Gears does not so much have plot, but rather a sketch of a plot, and lots of things getting gibbed by chainsaws.
But hey, we could be wrong. Maybe the game reaches heights of gameplay perfection right after the preview code we played ends.
The thing is, though, we know we’re more or less in the minority. On the console, this game is a mega-smash hit, though one thing does occur to us; at the risk of sounding elitist, there’s a reason that the first game was the only one of the series to be released on PC. It’s just not a PC shooter, and as PC gamers first and foremost, it’s no surprise we don’t like its rather stripped back and bombastic approach to the genre. In an age when even id is putting RPG elements into its shooters (and no one’s more tradition than id when it comes to an FPS), Gears refuses to be anything but brutally simple and one dimensional.
Who are we to argue? (well, argue much, anyway...)
Issue: 137 | June, 2012